Friday, January 14, 2011

The above is a photo of a Tucson radio station billboard. It was taken down on Monday, January 10, 2011.

Opinion: Jared Lee Loughner, the January 8, 2011, Tucson shooter, was a leftist anarchist, or a rightist anarchist (if there IS a difference, it’s their drug of choice), or just plain crazy. Who CARES?! (His own words will ultimately be proven to be an echo of such right-wing wingnut groups as the “patriot” movement).

Fact: Given on one side... Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Glen Beck, Sean Hannity, et al, there are absolutely NO media counterparts on the other side with the amount of national media coverage and funding, nor the amount of disrespectful and hateful vitriol raining down daily on the majority of Americans.

Fact: Given on one side... Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, John Boehner, John McCain, Jon Kyl, Darrel Issa, et al, there are absolutely NO elected government official counterparts on the other side with the amount of access to the national media, while communicating the amount of disrespectful and hateful vitriol repeated in that national media that is raining down daily on a majority of Americans.

Fact: The above named media pundits and elected officials are working overtime to paint Loughner as a leftist, themselves as victims, and to dredge up any quote (or mis-quote) from the other side that fools too many of us into believing a false equivalence fallacy*.

*A false equivalence fallacy occurs when someone falsely equates an act by one party as being equally egregious to that of another party, without taking into account the underlying differences that may make the comparison patently invalid.